Last night Harmony and I were sitting on the floor in the cabin working on a solar panel when over my shoulder I felt a presence. I looked toward the stairs and saw Tack (the cat) hunched on the top step, watching us balefully, looking like a drowned rat.
Harmony and I looked at each other for a good three seconds, checking to see if this was what we thought it was and trying to figure out whether it was sad, scary, or really funny.
Now that he’d gotten our attention he flew into action, hopping to the settee, the rug, leaving surprisingly large and deep wet spots everywhere he went. By this point we’d settled on a kind of ‘aww-ha-ha-ha’ pitying laugh and hopped up for a towel to wrap our little boy up.
I love this picture because Tackeroo looks like a pirate and Harmony can’t keep a straight face. 
Notice that his head is dry. This is part of the mystery that we later tried to unravel. 
We’ve been a little worried about Tack not drinking enough water in this heat we’ve been having. I’m a little less worried now. 
Saved the best shot for last.
After getting him moderately dry, Harm and I put on our gumshoe hats and decided to try to figure out where Tack went in the river. So I doffed a headlamp (donned? does it matter?) and we went out onto the dock. Right next to the boat was a sizable puddle, which initially had me thinking that he was just getting too fancy with his cockpit mounts and slipped. But then we noticed a pitter patter pattern of wet paw prints still soaked into the wood heading away from the boat. Bent over with our headlamp, we followed the trail down the dock, pausing at another seemingly random large puddle where Tack must have stopped to consider what the hell had just happened to him before continuing on toward home.
We continued to follow his trail back in time around a utility shed, where the trail ended in a very large puddle and some shredded claw marks on the side of the dock. This was in a slow section of the river toward shore where lots of twigs and leaves have collected and congealed to give the appearance of dry land, if you’re a dumb cat. We figure that either he tried to get the baby ducks or he just longed for land where he could poop in peace, only to fall into this natural boobytrap.
In seriousness though, we do worry about Tack falling overboard sometime during our travels. So far our plan is to dangle carpet strips off the back of Serenity so he can climb his way back onboard (the Internet told us that this will work). Unfortunately for him, the rug that I picked up from Ikea for this purpose is a great red shag carpet that is so comfortable we’ve ended up using it in the cabin instead and have yet to go back to Ikea for a second one. It’s probably for the best that we are postponing the whole kids thing.
On the bright side, Tack seems to have recovered rather nicely today.
